


If I Fall

by neverfaltering



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Blood, Broken Bones, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fainting, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Iron dad and Spider son, IronDad and SpiderSon, Irondad, Medical Procedures, Panic Attacks, Passing Out, Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Rhodey, Protective Tony Stark, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2018, bones - Freeform, fracture, fractured arm, idk how to tag!! what else is new, whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 03:32:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17655239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaltering/pseuds/neverfaltering
Summary: Peter fractures his arm after a bad fall and tries not to alert Mr. Stark, which ends up not working, because Tony has a panic attack at the sight of him.





	If I Fall

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys!! I wrote this long thing and I hope yall enjoy. check out the notes at the end!

Peter’s always careful of his swinging. He has to beーflying a hundreds of feet over New York isn’t exactly the safest thing he could be doing. On top of that, there’s Aunt May who’s already lost everyone, so. He kind of owes it to her to not die.

So he’s not exactly sure what went wrong after he realizes he’s free falling and everything is going way, way too fast.

Karen immediately jumps into action without Peter even saying anything. Thankfully, she’s quick with her, _“Peter, I’m activating the Impact-Absorber, okay? It’s going to be alright. Hang on.”_

Peter wants to ask her a million questions about what just happened, but he feels like he’s not really hanging on tight at all. Falling feels like time slows down, but Peter knows he’ll hit the ground soon enough. He waits for impact, but it takes too long. Too, too long. New York looks pretty as he drifts.

  


\--

  


“ _Peter? Peter, you’re okay. It’s me, Karen. You fell after your web fluid weakened and your grip slipped. You are six miles from Stark Tower. Would you like me to contact Mr. Stark?”_

Peter comes to, feeling like Karen’s talking in another language. She’s saying too many sentences at once.

“Karen, Karen.” He can feel his right arm moving around, waving, telling her to slow down, but his other arm feels off. Wrong. Twisted, almost. “Karen, can you- can you slow down? I-just. I-I’m not getting what you’re saying.”

“ _I apologize, Peter. It’s Karen here. You’re injured.”_

 _Okay. Shorter sentences. Cool. Understandable._ “How bad?” He’s used to receiving the shorter end of the stick, and he doesn’t exactly feel much pain, so. Shock’s the best drug, huh.

“ _You have a fractured arm after the landing. The Impact Absorber of your suit took most of the damage, but you landed awkwardly. Are you in pain?”_

Peter slowly inches off the ground. “Yeah, it’s starting to kick in,” he admits.

“ _Contacting Mr. Stark.”_

“What? No, no! Cancel, Karen! _No!_ Mr. Stark does not need to know about this! _”_

“ _Peter, I’m instructed to alert Boss when you’re in pain.”_

“Karen.”

Peter can hear her sighing in his head but nevertheless, she cancels the command. He breathes a sigh of relief. The last thing Mr. Stark needs is Spider-Man on the bench.

  


\--

  


Peter’s not usually this late. Tony slumps against the coach in the lab, his eyes closed. He’s actually looking forward to today’s session with Peter in particular since all his other projects have him drained. The kid has young eyes and can usually figure out a solution pretty quick. It helps that Peter doesn’t quit commentating while he works, which is always a nice distraction from the demons that constantly plague Tony.

His headaches have gotten increasingly worse lately and his attention span has decreased. He has to take breaks more frequently or black spots start dancing in his eyes.

“Hey, Fri, can you call Peter?”

She dials the call but it goes to voicemail. Knowing Tony, she calls again, only to receive no response. Tony asks for a couple texts to be sent out.

He waits.

  


\--

  


The route to Stark Tower has never seemed longer. With every step, Peter feels a stab of pain shoot through his entire body, but he can’t risk taking a cab. First of all, he has his suit on, and he can’t change out of it because his arm’s bruising dark purple, and he can’t even move it anymore. He tucks his hand close to his stomach to avoid jostling it. So the route takes twice as long, despite Peter sneaking into the back of pickup trucks and taking the alleyways when needed. He decides that his best bet is to keep his arm tucked near his side, and by the time he gets to the Compound, his healing should take its course.

He doesn’t check his phone, because it’s in his left pocket. He doesn’t even notice it vibrating, because the pain is so disorienting. But he’ll be okay. It’ll heal soon enough.

\--

  


Tony’s hands begin to shake thirty minutes after Peter should have arrived at the Compound. He’s anxious but he doesn’t want to invade the kid’s privacy all the time. Like, yeah, he’s _overprotective_ , but he doesn’t want to make Peter nervous about it.

_He’ll get here. He’ll get here. Soon. Soon enough._

  


_\--_

Peter arrives in all his glory, an hour late, pain etched all over his face. Tony opens the door a millisecond after the bell rings, because he had resigned to waiting there to calm some of his nerves.

“Hey, Mr. Stark,” he says, but the words are barely making it out of his mouth. He’s making a conscious effort to speak clearly. “Sorry for being late. I- I fell, and I didn’t wanna worry you about it, and I had planned for things to go as normal today, but my arm just. It started hurting, like, a lot? And I don’t think the healing’s working properly? And I figured that you’d be kind of mad if you figured out how bad it was later, so-so, um, yeah, I’m just telling you now.”

All his words seem to come out in one breath, and Tony doesn’t know how he makes any sense of it, but somehow, his mind connects the fragments and his eyes are adjusting and they focus on-

A very dark purple, disturbing, slightly-in-the-wrong-place left arm that Peter’s clutching close to his stomach. His skin is ghostly colored and Tony knows that if _Peter’s_ admitted to being in pain, then the pain must be on an entirely different spectrum.

He launches into commands, his brain, once again, a step ahead of his body. FRIDAY is responding left and right and there’s calls being placed and he can hear? _See?_ Bruce, maybe? He can feel his hands trying to clutch onto something, anything, _anything,_ because Peter’s hurt, but it’s not Toomes, or collapsing buildings, or anything. Peter’s _fine._ A little worse for wear, but overall okay.

_Okay. Okay. Okay._

Wait a second.

_I’m falling?_

Suddenly Tony feels arms around his shoulders, and he thinks he might be blind. Temporary blindness, they said. When he plummeted from the sky at a thousand miles an hour, and New York was falling around him, but he doesn’t remember seeing any of it. He doesn’t think he was able to. It was darkness, but Tony didn’t feel like he couldn’t see. So it might have been entirely bright. Either way, he’s taken back to that moment in the brief pummeling he feels.

_Tony, Tony. Tony. It’s Rhodey. You’re okay. Just fine. Open your eyes, Tones. You can see, I’ve got you. Open ‘em._

It takes more than a few seconds to manifest, but he’s still falling through time. Only when he opens his eyes, Rhodey’s in front of him, and he’s looking very carefully at Tony, and holding him with even more care, as if Tony’s the most fragile person in the world.

In Rhodey’s world, he is.

He’s lowered onto the couch, but he can feel himself moving, restraining against Rhodey’s tight grip. He’s also….forgetting something. In the midst of that... _panic attack,_ he realizes that he forgot Peter.

“Tony. Tony, don’t fight back. Relax, I’ve got you. Don’t fight it. You’re safe, in New York, everyone’s totally fine.”

He wants to believe it, but they said the same thing to him when Maria and Howard died. They said everything was fine, but they weren’t there for him anymore, and it was the worst lie he was told.

He doesn’t stop fighting Rhodey, because he can’t stop thinking about the news article from that day.

It feels like his brain’s walking through slush to effectively form a word, but he tries. “P...P..Rhodes- I, I-, _please_ , _Peter.”_

He tries remembering what it was about Peter that made him anxious, but it’s too much now. He feels the panic rise again, and this time, he has enough sense to warn Rhodey.

“Rhodes, Fall. _Falling._ Catch me. _Please._ ”

And then he feels Rhodey catching him again, because he does that best. The world goes a little haywire for him after that, but this time, unlike New York, he remembers.

The blindness comes in the form of white light.

\--

Peter remembers entering Stark Tower to a frantic Tony, his hair a mess and eyes red, hands shaking. Peter had started to explain but things went haywire in seconds. Something triggered Tony, and before he could even try to listen for Tony’s response to his long explanation, Tony was making calls and ordering people for various tasks, but his words were slurring and Friday had heard enough of Tony in a panic state to understand him, apparently, because the next thing Peter knew, he was being whisked away to the medbay on a stretcher and Tony was falling. He doesn’t remember where the stretcher came from or how it got there so quick, or how it felt when they rolled him on his back and his arm was jostled violently, but it was so quick that it seemed to have never happened. He saw Bruce, who was in his white coat, and then there was Rhodey who was helping Tony who had collapsed, and Peter remembers that he had reached for Tony, because he was shocked to see his own arm outstretched like that, very dark and spotty and bloody,  and he didn’t know when it got that bad. Bruce had pushed him back onto the stretcher and told him everything was going to be fine, but Peter had felt confused and guilty because he had caused some part of this. He thinks he might have thrashed around and been a difficult patient, because there was a hint of green on Bruce’s neck, though it quickly went away and was softened with his smile. They tied him to a bed pretty quickly, so it must have been bad.

All in all, the whole ordeal makes Peter’s head hurt, so he tries to inch out of the bed in the medbay to find someone who can get him some pain meds. His arm’s in a sling and it still throbs, but he knows there’s definitely something wrong if his healing powers didn’t come into play.

He knows he can probably call someone by pressing a button, but there’s not much wrong with his legs, so he should be able to get up-

 _Bad idea,_ Peter thinks, as soon as his socks touch the floor. The sudden change in orientation causes a dizzy spell that he can’t just walk off, so he resorts to listening to his ailing body for once, and just-- Sits. Right on the floor.

They’ll find him soon enough.

\--

Tony awakes to a high ceiling, and it takes him a few seconds to orient himself. _Stark Tower. Ceiling. The Den._ A figure pops into his view, and it takes a bleary second for him to breathe out, _“Rhodey.”_

“Hey, man. You gave us a real scare back there. Feeling okay?”

Tony tests his limbs and tries moving his hands, and everything seems relatively okay. “I think so, yeah.” _When did talking get so hard?_ “Tired, though.”

“Makes sense. You had a panic attack, by the looks of it. Freaked out the kid, too, but he didn’t have to see most of it. He’s good now, though, don’t worry-” Rhodey says quickly, noting Tony’s sudden change in demeanor. “Here, lie back. Everything’s pretty okay.”

  


\--

“He may have enhanced healing, but it’s not going to function properly if he doesn’t care for himself. I’m guessing he hasn’t had a proper sleep in about four days, Tony. Or a full meal. I actually found him on the floor. He may even be hallucinating at this point.”

Peter awakes to these sentences being spoken by none other than Bruce, who seems to be in a serious conversation with a frazzled-looking Tony. Has it really been that long since he properly slept? Or ate? He feels surprisingly okay, but then again, drugs really are something else.

Peter remembers that he definitely did get moved- his last memories certainly involve laying on the floor to rest his eyes. God, he’s a menace to deal with. No wonder everyone’s so concerned.

His heart rate must accelerate or something upon waking, because Bruce and Tony are by his side in an instant.

“Hey kid,” Tony says, but he’s not really smiling or anything, so Peter doesn’t know what tone to go for.

Peter goes with, “Hi, Mr. Stark,” and then he doesn’t know what else to say. His fingers find his way to Tony’s, and they wrap around and Peter feels okay again.

“You sure know how to make an entrance, Peter,” Bruce says, and he’s smiling all warm at Peter. He presses down on a couple areas and they must be bruised, because they make Peter wince.

Tony looks down at him sympathetically, tightening his grip around Peter’s (also bruised) hand. “I’m going to make you a suit entirely out of bubble wrap.”

“That’s not cool. I can’t swing around New York looking like a marshmallow.”

“It’s better than having you _bedridden,_ Peter. You could have gotten even more hurt than you already are!” Tony’s voice seems to rise without him meaning to. “Sorry, I just- I can’t look at you like this. I don’t like it.” He pauses. “I can’t, I-I don’t want that on my conscious. Not again. Not you, Pete.” He breaks eye contact with Peter.

There’s no words he can say to make this better, but Peter also can’t _move_ , seeing as Bruce has to restrain him to change his bandages so that Peter doesn’t unintentionally break the railings in the middle of the pain.

So, to say the least, it’s awkward when he says, “Sorry, Mr. Stark, I-uh-I really am. Honestly. I can’t really, uh, move, but like, would you mind a hug?”

The corners of Tony’s lips turn upwards just the slightest, and he lets Peter pull him closer with the hand he’s already holding, and they somehow make it work.

Peter can smell Tony’s shampoo and Tony’s holding him real tight, and it just. Feels really good. It seems to help Tony ease off the stress he’s under, too, because he closes his eyes against Peter’s neck and Peter can feel his eyelashes.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark, I’m sorry. I hope you’re okay,” he whispers.

“It’s okay, bud. I’m okay, I just, I-I get worried about you.”

The hug lasts for a long time, and Peter’s world mends itself slowly, piece by piece.

  


  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope u guys enjoyed that !! if you did then tell me because why not. give me feedback and also shout at me if I have bad grammar. like nice shouting though otherwise ill cry.  
> ALSO: I'm trying to practice my writing!! so like if yall have ever thought to yourself "gosh I wish someone would write this [very specific whump scene] that there isn't enough of!!" then todays ur lucky day because I'm willing to be that person and write that stuff. i can't promise i'll do it or finish very fast because I'm just sucky like that but if it really clicks with me then ill hit u up!! yea!!!


End file.
